Abstract:

The international community has been struggling with the issue of poverty since the Second World War. At the moment hopes are extremely high as developing countries’ GDP per capita has been on a constant rise for almost two decades now. The World Bank even proclaims that the world could end extreme poverty by 2030. On the other hand, globally the overall progress has been at least questionable so far. After almost 70 years of poverty reduction there are still over one billion humans living in extreme poverty, not to mention that almost every other human lives in poverty.

This contradiction between a dream and reality raises doubts over a sense of proportion. Indeed, even the World Bank itself has some reservations about succeeding. Thus World Bank President Jim Yong Kim appeals to everyone to participate in their grand endeavor. Among other things the World Bank requests for innovations. And this is a field where also an engineer can contribute. Hence, this master’s thesis aims to discover the most effective way for an R&D engineer to advance global poverty reduction.

To be able to do that, one needs to understand what poverty is and what causes it. This is so crucial issue for succeeding in the mission that this whole work is dedicated for clarifying the actual problem. In the study internal knowledge directs external search. Theory is built solely on theoretical research. Deeper understanding of the problem is achieved by consulting experts and searching published literature and statistics. Then an empirical research is conducted to compare this understanding with a reality.

This study finds poverty being above all a social construct, which is produced and reproduced by structural forces within society. Therefore poverty can’t be eradicated by a technical solution alone. But technology can provide tools to support processes of social inclusion of the poor. This study sees that this can be done the most effectively by increasing the poor’s ability to benefit from things that can constrain or enable their benefiting from resources. The final outcome of this work is a brief product development description to design an interactive and adaptive tool to provide access for the poor to relevant information, contacts, formalities, education, and publicity.Kansainvälisellä yhteisöllä on vahva tahto köyhyyden poistamiseksi. Töitä asian eteen on paiskittu erityisesti toisesta maailmansodasta lähtien, mutta saavutukset ovat jääneet globaalissa mittakaavassa varsin laihoiksi. Nyt toiveet ovat kuitenkin erityisen korkealla, sillä kehitysmaiden BKT per asukas on ollut jatkuvassa kasvussa viimeiset parikymmentä vuotta. Uudeksi tavoitteeksi on asetettu äärimmäisen köyhyyden poistaminen maapallolta vuoteen 2030 mennessä.